June 7, 2011 by Sarah
I’ve not been blogging lately, mostly due to things that I can’t really write about in this forum, but I think I can say that I’m a person who would like to live more off the grid than on it, and I’ve been learning that my life is about to get really on the grid. So I’m dealing.
Anyway, I’m glad to take the opportunity that Becky at Small Bits has presented and not have to come up with a topic to blog about.
Not that there hasn’t been a lot to blog about. Last Thursday the boys came home from fencing and told me they had had an accident. I asked if it was with the car or in fencing. “Fencing,” came the reply. Apparently while they were doing a warmup bout, Travis’ arm collided with Thomas’ mask and his bottom 2 front teeth sort of popped up. Not all the way out, but they are higher than they were. We took him to the dentist the next morning and she said it may heal just fine. We’re waiting to see about that.
Also last week was a visit from my parents. YEA!!!!! We had a lot of fun and walked a lot. Maybe too much for some of mom’s poor little toesies.
So. Enough procrastination. Now for the paperwork. Come to think of it, that is exactly how I tend to handle this subject in real life. I mean, it is just so daunting a task to think about what to do with bills, medical records, insurance information, bank stuff, certificates, info for housing, inventory lists, etc. etc. ad nauseum. And, no, I don’t know if I spelled that right because even though I’m a homeschool mom, not only have I not taken Latin ever, I also haven’t started teaching it. Yet. We’ll be starting that while we’re in Moscow. While we’re learning Russian. yea! But I won’t be ordering any of the materials until we’re at post, so that I can include them in our reimbursable expenses. Because I recently learned that that’s the way you do it.
Again, sorry for the procrastination. Can you tell I have too many things floating about in my brain? Of course you can. Or maybe you just think I’m ditzy. Well, I’m not saying you’d be wrong, especially lately.
O.K. So, we have all this paperwork. We’ve already shredded a TON of it while we were in Houston. And for that I am grateful. I think we got rid of more than 3 huge filing cabinet-sized drawers of the stuff. It was mostly old bills and such. Why did we even keep those things? And for the most part we’ve kept up with shredding those documents once they have been dutifully paid and sometimes scanned.
But then there are so many other categories. Like proof of our good status with the IRS. And insurance for life, limb, and possessions. And medical records. Those all seem important but then there’s the daunting task of knowing what to physically keep with you as you move across the world, you know, in your carry-on luggage. I used to think it was cumbersome to bring a pair of clean underwear in the carryon.
And if it’s not in your hands while traveling, who has it? There are few, if any, documents I’d want to ship in with our HHE or UAB shipments. I’ve heard stories of that stuff falling off into the ocean, or magically disappearing.
So I think maybe the best thing is to scan and save onto external hard drives and thumb drives the stuff we need with us, and send the rest to live happily with people we trust.
I can’t wait to read other people’s ideas about what to do with paperwork, because I have no clue if our plan will work or what flaws there are in it. And I don’t want to learn about that the hard way.